Swear on Camembert
by moonyprof
Summary: Sometimes you have to laugh, so you don't have to cry. Pinkie Pie and Cheese Sandwich may have more in common than they thought, including Ponyacci, the greatest clown in all of Equestria. But when Pinkie Sense and Cheesy Sense combine, it sends them on a journey to throw the worst party of their lives.
1. If You Want To Get Technicolor About It

Cheese Sandwich had barely gotten five miles away from Ponyville before he realized that his Cheesy Sense was nagging at him. He'd known it was telling him something, but he hadn't been able to identify it, because it was telling him something it had never told him before: _go back_. He shook it off and trotted on a few paces.

Go back? Why? He couldn't go back after such a dramatic exit into the sunset, especially a dramatic exit with a hat. Besides, he never went back anywhere right after a party. The only reason would be to throw an after-party, and who did that?

He trotted a few paces further, but it was like pulling against a heavy horse collar. _Go back_.

Had he forgotten something? He did a quick mental inventory. Boneless 2, explosives, pressurized punch mixture, collapsible fondue fountains—they were all where he usually kept them.

_Go back, go back, go back_, said his Cheesy Sense. _You forgot something_.

He couldn't ignore his Cheesy Sense. It was always a bad idea. He stopped at the top of a small rise, closing his eyes as he steadied himself against the backward pull on his hocks. It was no use. He'd have to go back. He could always tell the truth and say that his Cheesy Sense made him do it. There was at least one pony who would understand.

He felt the pulling starting to slacken as a jingling, springing sound came closer and closer, like a bell-covered beach ball. He opened his eyes and really wasn't surprised to see—

"Pinkie Pie?" His Cheesy Sense wasn't pulling at him anymore, so it must have been telling him to go back and get - Pinkie? That was definitely Pinkie Pie bouncing up the hill in a zigzag, dancing sideways, and finally springing forward on one hoof in a burst of confetti.

"Ta-da! Surprise! Are you surprised? 'Cause I was kinda surprised, maybe a little bit surprised, but not as surprised as when you told me about that party way back when you were a colt and everything, because I didn't remember you at all and I always remember everypony, but then I realized I did, but you were too shy to talk to me. Anyway, I was all 'whoa!' and then I thought 'that was the bestest party I ever threw, maybe we could throw some more someday,' and then I realized today was almost over, so someday could be tomorrow, and if someday was tomorrow, I'd have to leave tonight." She sucked in a deep breath. "But then I wasn't sure, but my mane and tail got all bunchy like THIS, and I knew my Pinkie Sense was telling me I had to come help you throw a party, so I just told the Cakes I couldn't baby-sit on Thursday, and packed a few things really quick, and came right along. And here I am!" Pinkie bounced around in him in a circle, her hooves creating little puffs of dust.

That made perfect sense to him.

"I brought three dozen multi-colored cupcakes, streamers, spare cartridges for the party cannon, mixed confetti and glitter, and of course a crate of extra balloons."

She was a light, practical packer. He liked it. She skidded to a stop, directly in front of the setting sun.

"And Boneless. I couldn't leave Boneless behind." _Of course not_.

She turned her head to reveal what looked like a large and repulsive hair ornament. "And Gummy."

Gummy he could live without, but his presence was a small price to pay.

With the sun behind her, Cheese couldn't read Pinkie's expression, but her shoulders were definitely slumping, and she poked the ground with one hoof.

"Aw. Cranky always says I mess this up all the time. I thought you'd be excited to see me."

_Be very cool with this, Cheese. Very, very cool_. He sat in the dust, lifted his chin, and tilted his black hat over one ear. "No," he said, in as steely a tone as he could muster, lifting one eyebrow. "No, I'm not excited to see you." Pinkie's head drooped.

_Aw, heck with it_. Off went the black hat. He threw it up and exchanged it in midair for his straw hat, which he flipped back onto his head. It was definitely a straw hat moment. "I am amazingly super fantastically thrilled to see you." He reeled her in with his tail for a quick, squeaky hug.

"Really?" she squealed, adding "gargh," as her eyes began to bulge. A trombone hit the dust, and he winced.

"Ooops. Yeah. Really." He telescoped the trombone back into his pack. "Sun's a settin'," he added, in an attempt to salvage some dignity. "We'd better be moseyin' along."

"Okey-dokey-lokey. Mosey it is!"

Actually, the sun had almost set, and a few stars had begun to pop out against a dark pink and purple sky as they trotted westward into the scrub desert. She was really much shorter than he was, but she was keeping up with his long legged, shambling gait with a seemingly tireless pronking bounce. Bounce—and she was at his height, and then she wasn't. Bounce—then she was, and then she wasn't again. At the bottom of the arc, stray hairs from the top of her mane tickled his chin, and at the top, they were eyeball to eyeball. It should have been very hard to keep up a conversation, but somehow it wasn't at all.

"I really, really thought your party bomb was super-duper!"

"Right," he replied, rolling his eyes, "until I upstaged you with it."

"Well, yeah, I hated that you were upstaging me and stealing my friends, and I kinda wanted to kill you for it at the time, but I still think it's super-duper. Ooo ooo ooo lemme guess! It's a reverse piñata with a combination cake/streamer payload, but I still can't figure out the detonator."

He stopped mid-stride. "It's my own design," he said firmly, "and it's a trade secret. You've got a wicked way with balloons, by the way."

"Mmm-hmm," she replied, continuing her pronk westwards, "that's a Pinkie Pie secret. And so's the punch recipe."

He sighed and shambled after her. "Oh, all right. I reverse-engineered it from some of Ponyacci's vintage party cannons, with his permission. They're classics."

"I KNEW IT!" she screamed into his ear, making it ring. "You had to have gotten that from Ponyacci! And I know what the charge is, too! It's two parts glitter to one part confetti."

"No, it's—hey, how'd you know that?"

"Ponyacci told me himself," she said, and her bounces somehow seemed smug. "I gave him the idea for his school."

His jaw dropped, and he skidded to a halt.

"Well, I'll be brie'd," he said in astonishment. "I had no idea!"

Pinkie sat back on her haunches, windmilling her front legs. "He was about to give up! Could you believe it? He has, like, the best timing ever!"

"And he can be funny without even lifting a hoof," Cheese agreed. "He just STANDS there and the audience has to be carried out on stretchers."

"He's totally my inspiration!" gushed Pinkie, clapping her hooves to her cheeks.

"Mine, too! Aside from, um, you, of course." Pinkie somehow went pinker. "But," he added, clearing his throat, "that's irrelevant."

"No, silly, that's a hippopotamus! Ba-dum-shh!"

"I call dibs on the pie," Cheese said, a second too late. You couldn't expect to have your pie and throw it, too. "Anyway," he continued as they trotted on past some boulders, "the two to one mixture is old school. With the new low-density confettis, you get a better effect with a 1.25 to 1.75 confetti/glitter ratio. More than that, and you blow the guests up, and they don't like that, somehow. Go figure."

Now that he was talking, he couldn't stop. He was deep into the technicalities of dance floor materials, lighting patterns, and bubble wrap, but she didn't seem bored.

"I never get to talk about this back in Ponyville, Cheesie. I mean, psshht, my friend Rarity, she's all arty, and Twilight's all geeky, and Dashie's all 'hey, check out this wicked trick,' and here I'm doing all three at the same time and making everypony laugh, and everypony's like 'oh, Pinkie, you're so random.' "

"Nopony takes these things seriously."

"I know!"

The sky was blanketed in dark blue, spangled with glittering stars, like Equestria's own drop curtain. The moon had risen and set, and he realized they'd been talking for hours. His eyes were beginning to droop, and Pinkie was literally asleep on her feet.

"Do you ever talk in your sleep, Cheesie?" she murmured. "I do, I mean, I don't really know when I'm doing it but my friends tell me I talk in my sleep and I even tell jokes in my sleep, which is really bad 'cause I can't tell if I nailed the punchline or not, and then I wake myself up."

He eased her onto her own puffy tail, and dropped his serape over her, so she wouldn't get cold. He thought about peeling Gummy out of her mane, but the little reptile blinked at him with what he was convinced was an accusing glare, so he decided to leave him where he was. He always had some kind of junk with him—broken tennis rackets, perforated straw hats, and the like, the casualties of dozens of comedy acts—so he simply piled some up, exploded a cigar on top of it, and fluffed out his own tail.

"—and the secret ingredient is Gummy, 'cause he tastes like gum, duh, and I don't really know how I do the balloons, and I wish I could play the accordion really fast like you, but I can play ten instruments at the same time and I guess that's almost as good. And I'm glad you came back for Dashie's birthday, even if I thought I was going to lose all my best friends, because now it turns out I have another bestest best friend and I didn't even know."

The cheese might be used to standing alone, but Cheese Sandwich was glad not to be for once.

He fell asleep listening to her chatter. It was really refreshing.


	2. Chapter 2: It's All In The Timing

He woke up with a start, jumping to his hooves as his accordion cutie mark performed multiple two and a half octave runs. To his right, he heard a simultaneous gasp from Pinkie Pie. At first, he thought he'd woken her up, and then he realized she was also on all four hooves, twitching and convulsing.

"Twitchy tail, floppy ears, knee shakes, right front hoof—Cheesie, it's something bad! Something really, really, really bad!" she gasped. She began to dart erratically, first in one direction, then another, looking under rocks and tufts of grass, as though they held some kind of answer, while Gummy remained fastened stoically to her mane.

He tried to shake the muscle spasms out of his neck, but now his knees were wobbling. "Wait, what? I'm getting a party. A big party." Definitely a party, and there were things he was going to need, and something that would tell him what kind of wingding, hoedown, hootenanny or shindig this one was supposed to be, because he honestly had no idea. He started wildly going through everything he could think of with both front legs, tossing it all over his head with a _plonk_. _Fire extinguisher? Banana peels? Inflatable whale? Streamers, whipped cream, moose antlers, stethoscope, sousaphone, hamsters—no, no, and no. Hats! Fruit hat, porkpie, trilby, mortarboard—no, no, no, no. Greasepaint. Greasepaint?_ Pinkie darted back next to him, watching the stream of stuff he was pulling apparently from nowhere. She must be very distressed, because she didn't show any sign of wanting to play with any of it or to see if it worked. She just bounced in place anxiously.

"Is it a doozy?"

_Clank clank clank_. "Something epic. But you say you're getting something bad."

"It's really, really, really bad, Cheesie, but I don't know what it is," she keened, rocking back and forth and hugging her tail. "I've only maybe felt it once before, and I don't remember what it was."

"Something really bad, _and_ an epic party? That doesn't make sense." He began to stow everything as quickly as he'd pulled it out, grabbing it with both front legs and his tail. _Greasepaint? Why greasepaint?_ "I know I'm supposed to go that way," he added, waving at a range of poplar-covered hills in the distance. _I have to go that way. I don't have a choice._

"Me too, me too, me too!" Pinkie darted over and bounced onto his head, trying to see better. "What's over that way?"

He shaded his eyes with one hoof, the old steely calm settling over him. "Mane-tua. Ponyacci's home village. It's the only town in that direction."

A pink streak was already receding into the distance. He had to gallop to catch up with her. "Pinkie, slow down!" He was galloping so fast that the wind was smarting his eyes and making them tear up, and still she was moving so quickly that he could barely see her on the horizon. She stopped so abruptly that the momentum carried him past her into a wild skid, sliding on his haunches and hooves blurring, and he had to double back. She was twisting some balloons together. Just as he reached her, she let them go, watching them being taken by the wind and disappearing into white, puffy clouds.

"There's no hurry now," she said quietly, sitting absolutely still. His accordion mark gave two loud, insistent runs, and his left hind leg kicked out like a piston, propelling him straight up and trying to get him started.

It took all his willpower to fight it long enough to blurt as he trotted in place, "No, Pinkie, now it's urgent. Gotta go."

He broke into a speed trot, because the truth was that he only tried to look cool once he got somewhere. On the way, he moved as quickly as he could. The only thing that mattered was getting to that wingding, hoedown, hootenanny or shindig right this second, because you could not afford to let things start without you once it was go time. Every gig was _the_ gig, but this really was going to be the show of a lifetime, the show of shows, the sky dive, the cake topper, the one to end it all. Of course she was going to be there, of course, because it all made sense in his gut in a way his brain didn't have time to understand. That was why he didn't have to look back to know that she was right behind him, speeding like a pink rocket.

He paid no attention as they moved out of scrub desert and headed uphill on a narrow path. He barely noticed the switchbacks as the terrain became wooded and mountainous. All that mattered was getting there and getting there now.

The trees began to fall away, revealing broad, golden open fields and whitewashed walls in the distance, to which they were getting closer. "Almost there," he called over his shoulder. He slowed to allow her to catch up, which she did, puffing and blowing.

"Oh"-gasp—"good"—gasp—"where's there? Is it here?"

He stopped for a moment, scratching his mane with one hoof as he squinted at the little walled town in front of them. "Yes. No. At least, it is, and I can feel it's the right place to be. It looks like Mane-tua, but it doesn't. Usually you can see flags flying, and the gates should be open at this time of day. Everything's wrong somehow."

She sat down next to him. "Did – did you say this was Ponyacci's home village?" she said, her voice flat. He nodded emphatically.

"It is, and that's why I can't understand it. I've been here at least half a dozen times. The sound is wrong, too, because, well—because there isn't any." He rose to his feet, shaking his head. "It's all wrong, and I'm supposed to be here anyway. Cheesy Sense never lies."

As they approached the little village, two stallions pushed the gates open. A third stallion, green with a blue mane, moved listlessly towards them, a noisemaker drooping from his lip. He raised his head sharply to see who it was, then sighed with relief.

"Is that Cheese Sandwich? We knew you'd come. We knew you'd have to come."

"Pickle Barrel? What's happened? Where's Ponyacci? What in Equestria is going on?"

The green stallion sat down slowly, not even noticing that there was a stranger with them.

"We knew you'd have to come, Cheese, but I guess I figured that you'd already know. Dad died this morning."


	3. Chapter 3: Comedy Is Hard

It was too bad, Cheese thought numbly, as they trotted through the gates of Mane-tua, that Ponyacci's son Pickle Barrel had all the comic razzmatazz of a pizza left in the rain. You could practically hear the sad sack "_waw-waw-waw_" soundtrack as he talked. It wasn't Pickle's fault—heck, his own mom and dad had wanted him to be a doctor—but it left the family at a definite loss when the situation called for some serious fun.

"I could see Dad was slowing down, but he was enjoying himself so much," Pickle Barrel droned. "He'd get up early and fall downstairs, saying 'wa-ha-hey! Who's ready to laugh?' The grandkids fought for a chance to sit next to him at breakfast. Then he'd have a quick trot around the enclosure, and go straight to the classroom tent every morning."

"He was supervising the pie throwing class and they were just getting to the point where he said they could juggle eggs. He was giving them a demo and he missed one. He said, 'Gotta sit down. Don't want to wind up with egg all over my face,' and he sat down and coughed a couple of times and he died. I guess he went easy, 'cause he always said comedy was hard."

To his left, Pinkie Pie snorted up a puff of confetti, but he couldn't tell if it was a snicker or a sob. The whole town was subdued in a way Cheese had never seen it before: nopony in the market square, nopony leaning out of the windows to talk, no fillies and colts chasing each other in the streets, trying to get out of going to school. He could hear the flapping of Ponyacci's circus tent school, and it couldn't be more obvious that class was cancelled now, for who knew how long. It was—it was—

Well, it was making him want to juggle, that's what it was doing.

"What am I going to do, Cheese?" Pickle lamented, kicking one of the dustballs that always accumulated wherever he went. "Dad always said he didn't want anypony to be sad when he died. He wanted us to have a big party and celebrate. That's what Ma wants us to do. She's keeping it together like a real trooper. We know he would have wanted it this way. But," the green stallion went on, "I'm just not feeling all that funny." He dolefully blew on a squeaker.

Pinkie and Cheese exchanged a glance, but he spoke for both of them. "Funny is what we do."

The party was the funnest, most fantabulous, superbial party in all of Equestria. It was, in fact, epic. The marketplace blazed with hundreds of lights. Ponyacci's matched set of party cannons roared out a glittering salute against the night sky as Cheese and Pinkie somersaulted past each other, exchanging a hoof-bump on the way. Ponyacci's clown school recruits had dropped their moping and risen to the occasion, each contributing his or her specialty in a way that would have made their teacher proud. On this corner, you could hear the crack of slapsticks; on that, balls, bottles, colanders, egg whisks, and even hammers whizzed by in a flurry of juggling; on another, ponies rattled off shtick:

"And I said to him, 'pull the hind hoof, it's got bells on!'"  
"You nincompoop! They've all got bells on!"

Fillies and colts shrieked as they zoomed down a giant slide and bounced off an enormous Ponyacci balloon statue. The bakery turned out hundreds of cupcakes, the street vendors pushed carts of chestnuts and popcorn, and the ice cream never stopped coming. In fact, it seemed as though all of Mane-tua had wanted to give the old clown the affectionate send-off he deserved, and only needed the positive persuasion of a pair of polka party ponies to do it.

They capped it with a reprise of their Ponyville Goof-Off as a finale, and while it was missing a little of the original venom, he got to use the sea lions and the alpenhorn, so it all balanced out.

The cider and grape juice flowed freely, and as the party went on into the small hours, a lot of ponies were feeling no pain, and inclined to get talkative about it.

"Great party," a brandy-colored stallion with a cherry as a cutie mark confided, hiccupping. "Say, Uncle P. usedta talk about you. 'Sour Mash,' he'd say-he called me 'Sour Mash' on account of that's my name—'Sour Mash, that Patty Melt-' "

"Cheese Sandwich."

"—yeah. He usedta say, 'that Cheese Sandwich, he's quite the deal. Not naturally funny, knowwhadImean? But he makes it work.' "

"Thanks."

"Yeah. So you –you and that Cherry Bomb—her an' you—you a thing or are you-"

"Oh, look, a distraction," Cheese blurted, pointing towards a small lake of fermented grape juice. "Here, you'll want some cheese with that. Gotta run!"

The party went very, very late. They only got away because Ma Ponyacci insisted.

"You," she said firmly. "Both of you. You'll sit down, you'll eat something, you'll get some sleep."

"Sleep? What's sleep?"

"Aw, thanks, Mrs. Ponyacci," said Pinkie, stars in her eyes, "but I'm so, so, so happy I could help throw Mr. Ponyacci's last party. I wouldn't have missed it for anything."

The older mare shook her head. "You're not going to stop trying to make 'em smile while you're still here, are you? Don't answer that. You're all the same, I swear to Celestia." She escorted them out of the gates and hugged them both till they squeaked. "Don't be strangers, either of you, hear me? And eat something, Luna out loud. I don't know why I bother," she muttered, "the colt practically inhales cheese and he's still thin as a rail." She turned and walked back through the gates, Pinkie waving after her in a blur of pink hoof.

"Wasn't she nice, Cheesie?" said Pinkie, as they trotted back the way they came. "I'm so lucky to have so many new friends. And it's not as though I'll never talk to Mr. Ponyacci again, right?"

He must have looked bewildered, because she explained, "my talking Ponyacci doll. I left him at home, but he can always talk to me again. You just squeeze him, and he says . . . he says . . . 'wa-ha-hey! Who's ready t-to laugh?' "

Pinkie slipped to her knees, put her muzzle between her front legs, and wailed. Every single sob she'd been saving up all day was gushing out in a fountain of tears. And he wanted to cry, too, but he couldn't, he simply couldn't, not yet . . .

_because he had to make her laugh._

He sat next to her for what seemed like ages until she had almost cried herself out, and then wordlessly dropped Boneless, the rubber chicken he'd given her, in front of her nose where she could see it. Her hoof came down on it, almost automatically.

_Squee. Squee. Squee, squee, squee_. She giggled feebly, then stopped.

"Cheesie," she said in a small voice, "I'm really tired, and I want to go home."

She did look exhausted, crouching there on all fours. He thought for a moment. "There's a railway switch near here, where the trains have to slow down. The train line runs through Ponyville. I've slipped into the boxcars myself, lots of times. I can get you on that."

She took in one deep, shaky breath. "OK," she said, getting to her feet, and they walked slowly down the hills, down to the tracks, the sky still the dingy, bruised gray before dawn. As the train slowed to a crawl, he hoisted her into the boxcar, then, a split second later, without thinking about it, he jumped in after her himself. He pulled together some sacking into a pile, and she sank onto it gratefully.

"Thanks, Cheesie. I'm so tired. I kind of get all coco-loco when I can't be with my friends in Ponyville."

"We'll get you back there," he said firmly.

"And you'll stay with me the whole way?" she said sleepily. "Pinkie Pie swear?"

_Pinkie, I can't promise anything. If my Cheesy Sense goes, I have to go. Even right this minute, even though I know exactly how miserable you'd be, even though I'd kick myself for being a heel, I'd jump out of this train, and hit the open road, and I'd slay 'em when I got there, because funny is what we do._

He sighed. "Swear on Camembert," he muttered, and dropped his neck over hers, even though he knew their manes would tangle into a brown and pink mess. He felt better almost immediately. He could do that much, right? He could at least get her home. He couldn't break a Cheesy promise. Could he?


End file.
